Decelerating society is self-contradictory because progress entails dynamization

Evidence

If the second possibility represents, as it were, the triumph of the modernization process over the cultural and political project that originally consolidated it, then a third possibility consists in the converse attempt to assert the modern aspiration to shape human affairs against the self-autonomizing forces of acceleration. As I have shown in chapter 11, this requires that we, as it were, “reach for the emergency brake” to prevent the social tempo from surpassing the threshold beneath which it can still be politically and individually controlled. … However, this idea is highly unrealistic because it remains unclear who the political and institutional bearers of such a politics of deceleration could be, and also because of the unpredictable economic and social costs that such a forced resynchronization would engender, but above all in virtue of the crisis of the modern conception of the role of politics in time. For it would mean in principle not only the reversal of functional differentiation but also an exit from the modernization process in general. Its aim of holding onto the classical modern idea of progress and conserving the experiential space of temporalized history by stalling the spiral of growth and acceleration is inherently self-contradictory: as I have tried to show, the idea of progress and hence the project of modernity already irrevocably entail the modern process of dynamization, and they are indeed themselves a reaction to the historical experience of social acceleration. Progress and acceleration were indissolubly linked together from the very beginning. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 848

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Social acceleration is the irreducible master principle of modernization — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 762; Devaluing present action blocks social progress; Fundamental social change erupts when progress is blocked by anachronistic institutions — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 251 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Fundamental social change erupts when progress is blocked by anachronistic institutions #corroborates (0.80) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 251
• Social progress inherently requires offending deeply held sensibilities. #corroborates (0.78) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 660
• Devaluing present action blocks social progress #qualifies (0.75)
• Each mode of production is driven forward by overcoming its own contradictions #corroborates (0.72)